


the walls call out my name; the ground shatters all the same.

by whataboutateakettle



Category: Scorpion (TV 2014)
Genre: Claustrophobia, F/M, Gen, Panic Attacks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-15
Updated: 2016-01-15
Packaged: 2018-05-14 02:46:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5726851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whataboutateakettle/pseuds/whataboutateakettle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i> He’s fine until the door closes. </i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	the walls call out my name; the ground shatters all the same.

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by lots of things, including conversations about how good these guys are at nearly dying, and how I'm still upset there was no aftermath for 2x06 and my own minor panic attack a few weeks ago.
> 
> In my head this is set at any point in the six months following the Tech, Drugs & Rock'n'Roll episode. Whether or not you want to place it post or pre-kiss us up to you guys!
> 
> (It is quite hard to write out symptoms without sounding like a medical chart, I have found, so I hope I did this justice.)

He’s fine until the door closes.

But before that, as soon as they get the go-ahead, Happy pushes past him into the safe; he’s confused for a moment before he remembers what they’re standing in is the practically the love-child of a genius safe engineer and a paranoid billionaire. _Security on crack_ , as Happy had put it that morning while almost drooling over the blueprints.

There’s a filing cabinet in the corner, unlocked which he finds a little oxymoronic. He runs his finger over the tabs, hoping the right name jumps out at him. It’s not like they have a lot of time here. 

He’s only half paying attention to everything else. Happy’s somewhere on the other side of the room, not even ten feet from him, and he hopes she’s actually looking for what they need and not admiring the structure of the reinforced titanium panels or something. 

“I got something!” He calls, to her, to everyone else on comms. It might not be everything they need, but it’s definitely a step in the right direction. His chest swells a little as he reads the incriminating information, feeling pleased that his life includes taking scumbags like this out of rotation. “Happy, I need that camera!” 

_Correction_ , he’s fine until the door slams and bolts. 

He spins around on his heels, still gripping the file. Happy, who’s halfway to him, is frozen in her tracks for a split second. 

“Not good.” They say it at the same time, and Happy shoots him a look, though he thinks her narrowed eyes is more directed at their current lack of exit, than at him. 

The solid door means that the signal to their comms is suddenly a lot weaker, and while he can still _sort of_ hear Walter asking them a million and one questions, the sounds crackles loudly, cuts off whole words and makes their team feel a lot farther away than the across-the-road-and-down-the-alley they actually are. 

Happy is saying something about overriding emergency features, rumored to exist but left off the blueprints; she sounds ever so slightly impressed and it takes a deep breath, ragged and heavy, to not ask why the _hell_ she didn’t disable them when she cracked the damn thing. 

He watches as she follows the edges of the door with her hand, estimates where the wiring might be hidden, lists potential ways to get through the reinforced titanium panels and it’s not until he’s glances down at the file in his hands to realise they are shaking. He can’t even read the words anymore. 

“Doc! You gonna help or what?” Happy yells, not even turning to look at him, “Sly says we have less than forty minutes of air in this thing. I need to get this panel open _fast_ if I’m gonna improvise a way disarm it.” 

Walter tries to suggest something, but the comms crackle so much he suddenly feels like his head is going to explode, and he pulls it out as fast as he can, doesn’t even watch where it drops. The file’s dropped too, at some point. He hadn’t even noticed he’d let go, except now his hands are empty and still shaking. He clenches both fists, tries to still them but the more he tries the more his chest tightens with them. 

He tries to remember the exact measurements of this thing from the brief this morning. The two of them, in a box this size, Sly’s right, they have about forty minutes of oxygen. If they keep their breathing slow and shallow, under fifteen breaths per minute, they could maybe get ten more minutes out of this place. He shuts his eyes and his chest squeezes even more, as he realises how quickly he’s been breathing this entire time. He’s more than used up their extra ten minutes. 

“We don’t have-” he starts, breathes in sharply again. He needs to tell her. He needs to calm down first but his fingers are digging into his palms, and his hat feels too small for his head and he definitely can’t feel his feet anymore and-

The last time he was trapped in an impenetrable box he _died_. And this almost feels worse. 

He tries to slow his breathing, tries to recite the bones in the hand as a distraction, and ends up inhaling so sharply through his nose that he chokes on it, starts retching. 

“Curtis, you better -” Happy calls at him, he’s lost track of her completely, but she sounds distant and muffled and mad and he tries to remind himself that only one of those are probably true. 

“ _Toby? Wait, Walt, something’s wrong-_ ” Happy sounds so far away, and he tries to focus on her voice but his own breathing is too loud in his own damn head and he needs to tell her-

“Hey, I’m here, okay,” she says, and it sounds closer, until her hands are on his shoulders and she’s pushing him down to the ground. She follows him down, kneels down next to him. 

“What’s happening, Doc? What do I do?” One hand is still on his shoulder and the other touches his cheek for a second. But he looks up at her with such a pained expression that she drops it straight away. She looks scared. 

“I need -” He gasps. He needs to regulate his breathing or they’ll both die. “I need -”

“Guys, I think he’s having a panic attack,” she says and for a second he forgets she still had he comms in, is confused why she’s telling him what he already knows. 

“Okay, okay,” she nods at no one in particular and moves herself so that she’s directly in front of him, puts her hands on his shoulders again. Except this time she moves them up to his cheeks again, and leaves them there. He tries to focus on the feel of her hands on his skin, tries to counts her fingers tips. 

“Toby, look at me.”

He wants to. He wants to talk to her. He wants to tell her they’re running out of oxygen, that it’s his fault because he can’t stop hyperventilating. That he loves her. 

“Toby,” her voice is softer now, but it sounds even closer and he drags his eyes up, heart still pounding in his throat, her fingers still burning into his skin.  
He meets her gaze and her eyes are warm and wide and worried. 

“We’re. Running. Out of. Time,” He says, gasping out words between heavy breaths. He sees her starts to shake her head but stops, maybe Sly says something in her comm, maybe she figures it out on her own. 

She brushes her thumb along his jaw slowly, gently, and he’s staring hard enough that he sees her gaze flicker down to his lips for a split second, before moving up to meet his again. “Talk to me, Doc.”

“What?” He frowns, lifts his shaking hand but by the time he reaches his face her hands are already gone and she’s standing up. 

“You never shut up, don’t start now.” He watches her head back over to the still bolted door, let’s his gaze trail from her heavy boots, up her black jeans to her jacket and her curly black ponytail. She doesn’t look back at him, but he can feel her hold her breath. 

He talks, or tries to between ragged breaths, about anything he can think of. About the movie Sly made them watch last week, and how she burnt the toast this morning. She hums in agreement when he demands a veto on the next case that includes a box with no exit. 

There’s a loud crack, and he looks up again and see her standing there with large panel of metal in one hand and what looks like her bike key in the other and he has no idea how she does the things she does, but thinks right there that she could be magic. No, she is. Definitely magic. 

Behind the panel are dozens, maybe hundreds, of wires and she’s crouched in front of them, muttering something into her comms in a tone that makes his chest squeeze tighter again and he looks away. He sees the file he’d dropped, a foot away from him, and reaches for it. At least he can try and help, while Happy’s saving their lives. He blinks until the words focus, commits the facts to memory as much as he can. 

He’s in the middle of the last page when he hears a loud click and screech. 

“Happy! Toby!” Voices call, and he looks up to see the door open and their friends rushing in. Paige takes the papers out of his hands straight away and gives him a hug, before pushing him towards the door. 

“Go,” she nods. 

A small hand grabs his and pulls him, past Walter and Cabe, out of the safe, up from the basement on this building, and he follows blindly the whole way until they’re standing out in the sunshine and her hand lets go of his.

“You okay?” she asks, watches his face carefully. 

His heart is still beating too fast, he can feel it half in his throat, but his breathing has relaxed finally, and his hands, he looks down at them to make sure, aren’t shaking anymore either. 

He nods, tries to smile but his lips feel too dry to stretch. 

“Has this happened before?” 

“No,” he shakes his head. “Not because of this.”

She frowns at his answer, like it wasn't what she wanted to hear, and he forgets that she hasn’t always been there with him, not in his bedroom when it felt too small for him, or in his dorm room when it felt too big, or in the alleys that were too dark or in front of the headstone that was too new. She presses her lips together, doesn’t say anything. Just watches him, waits. 

He nods again, reassuring her, reassuring himself. “I’m fine,” he says and they both ignore how _not fine_ he sounds. 

Later, Paige will come out and flutter around them. Later, Walter will figure something out and Cabe will arrest the sociopath that decided to build that deathtrap. Later, Sly will wring his hands and offer him advice, and Paige will insist on making him tea.

Later, Happy will offer him a cold beer, for which he will gladly abandon his tea. She’ll look at him like he might be made of glass and he’ll crack a joke until she stops. He’ll tell her he wasn’t actually scared, because he knew she’d get them out.

~~She won’t tell him she was.~~

But now the sun is a little blinding, and a light breeze brushes over his skin and reminds him he is, in fact, alive. He instinctively reaches out his hand and hers is right where she left it.


End file.
